It began with O2 exclusivity but now most of the major UK carriers sell the iPhone, Three has just been added to that list of carriers which is an intresting move. Three usually offer very good deals and make the devices very cheap so we could possibly see a cheaper iPhone 4 from Three.

All the carries have confirmed that they will be selling the iPhone 4 from June 24th so it’s going to be an interesting launch and a strong amount of competition.

An email was sent out today to all Vodafone customers about the release of the iPhone on their network today. Vodafone has joined the other 3 carriers of the iPhone in the UK (O2, Orange and Tesco Mobile.)

According to Vodafone, they estimate they will be able to sell 50,000 iPhones by the end of the day. If they achieve this they will beat Orange’s launch record of 30,000 and outsell the Google Nexus One, which only sold 20,000 in it’s first week.

Orange & Tesco Mobile are soon to be joined by Vodafone as one the iPhone carriers in the UK. They have announced that the iPhone will be on their networking starting January 14th.

The plans start at £30 a month for 24 months, with additional handset charges ranging from £59 (iPhone 3G 8GB) to £239 (3GS 32GB). However, if you sign onto a £35 a month contract for 24 months the 8GB iPhone 3G is free.

Unlike Orange, O2 and Tesco Mobile; Vodafone don’t appear to be offering a Pay As You Go option for its customers.

There has been some concerns whether or not the network would be able to handle the major increase in traffic, but Guy Laurence, chief executive of Vodafone UK, says the company has been preparing for the launch for over a year, strengthening their infrastructure for the release.

As I spoke about before, Tesco said how they were hoping to release the iPhone 3GS before Christmas. Now the date has been set for December 14th, just in time for Christmas. Tesco gave some further details on their offerings of the iPhone. It has free unlimited 3G (fair use policy applies) and BT Openzone WiFi access, which is free for a year to Pay As You Go customers and for the life of your contract if your on Pay Monthly, the same as O2 offers.

The cheapest contract is £20 per month for their one-year contract, but that gets you only £60 calls and texts allowance and you have to pay £320 for the 16GB device itself. They also offer an unlimited calls and texts plan for £60 per month, cheaper than what Orange offer. Last of all they offer half-price calling to your favourite five numbers. The Pay As You Go costs will be the same as what O2 and Orange offer.

If you re-call my article from months ago, I suggested how the BBC need to make a native BBC iPlayer app and their latest press pack hints that this has finally begun.

The image shows the native app running on Wi-Fi, much like the website, which restricts you to only WiFi. It will be up to O2, Orange and Vodafone whether or not they will allow it to run on their 3G network. Little is known about the app, except what we can see from the images.
It appears to show a downloads section, meaning the possibility of downloading radio and TV to listen to when your not in WiFi, much like on the computer. This will probably have the same DRM which will delete it after so many days. The DRM on the media could have been the reason it’s took the BBC so long to develop the app as last time it was put on a portable device it wasn’t long until someone worked around it.

There still no confirmation of the native iPhone application but from these images we know that something is in the works.

UK supermarket giant, Tesco, has unveiled that they will start to sell iPhone’s this year. Offering ‘competivie contract prices’. A spokesman for the firm said that it hoped to offer the phone “in time for Christmas”. They have not yet revealed tariffs but are offering “competitive prices”.

Tesco has now joined the iPhone party: O2, Orange, Vodafone and now Tesco will sell both the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. Orange said that they had sold more than 30,000 handsets on its first day of release.

The phone will still be running on O2 as Tesco Mobile and O2 are in a joint venture. You will be able to get the phones both on contract and pay as you go.